We’re Right 2003, Part 2

The latest in a storied franchise, Raven Shield would be on here even without the gripping adversarial modes - cooperative play alone would garner an accolade of this measure. As it stands, you get both in the same box - it’s an easy game to recommend, versatile, the sort of game that takes over LAN events years out from release. Great maps with the feel of real areas, a ridiculously large suite of fully customizable weapons, and the ability to put a little Tycho patch on my shoulder means Number Nine.

Single or Multiplayer, Infinity Ward apparently knows how to please - with stirring sound, powerful scenes, and challenging pomegranates. They’ve single-handedly given the World War 2 genre a stay of execution, drawing as they did on new perspectives and considerable experience working in its confines. The clan I play with will sometimes stay at the spawn in Harbor, shooting the water with a pistol just to enjoy the sound of a single bullet plipping through the surface. The game is full of fine touches, wholly unnecessary flourishes that elevate it. If you were wondering how to get on our “best of” list for a given year, play Call of Duty and take careful notes.

The multiplayer matches we’ve had in Links 2004 quite simply compare with any - any - game we’ve ever played against other human beings. I’m as shocked as anyone, and in the abstract it’s hard to imagine a game like this providing what you would call “addictive multiplayer.” A host of intriguing golf scoring systems and methods of play reward different approaches to the game and require varying levels of teamwork - and nowhere, not in any other experience I’ve had online, have I had to rely so much on my teammate. When the whole game comes down to only forty or so individual inputs - for some game types, even less - they matter. There have been other golf games, other good ones even. I never got into them like I did Links 2004, which - despite some flaws in presentation - produces the most compelling round of golf out there, multi or no.

I’m sad that Panzer Dragoon Orta didn’t make its way on this list, you’d think since I helped write the list it would be something I had the power to resolve - but this club is so exclusive, it only allows twelve members. If you’d like to see PDO get its propers, feel free to head over to Gamespot’s time-release awards ceremony where it snagged Best Shooter from games like Call Of Duty and Max Payne. I would never have put those games on the same list - a rail shooter, a third person action game, and an FPS - but anomalies are bound to crop up when you choose genre as your top level hierarchy. We have absolutely no grouping mechanism whatsoever, I’m not saying their process is faulty. What we’re doing is directly comparing Apples to Nuclear Reactors. Which one is more crisp, which one produces more electricity, etc.